With increasing requirement on user data rate, the role of a wireless local area network (Wireless Local Area Network, WLAN) has become more and more important. However, the WLAN has a relatively small coverage, the mobility of the user application is high, as a result, a WLAN network is even more dynamic, the number of wireless access points (Access Point, AP) to be maintained by a WLAN operator increases dramatically, and thus the maintenance cost needed is getting larger and larger. Particularly, a traffic hot spot of the WLAN network in a cell occurs increasingly frequently, and therefore, detection of a traffic hot spot in a cell has become a technical problem that has to be solved in the current WLAN network management.
In the prior art, a station records load conditions in each cell, including determining a traffic hot spot through determining the number of users accessing to an AP of the cell and through determining the number change of users accessing to the AP of the cell. If the number of users accessing to the AP of the cell is greater than a certain threshold and the number change of users accessing to the AP of the cell is greater than a certain threshold, then it is determined that a traffic hot spot exists in the cell.
In the prior art, however, when load is abnormally increased due to strong interference experienced by a cell, a traffic hot spot cannot be accurately determined by an AP and accordingly, it is easy to cause an error operation on a network.